Programming Apps for Kids

Today our class learned a bit about apps that teach kids a bit about computer code, or giving certain commands to the computer to make a program do what you want it to do. This is tied to an initiative aimed at exposing K-12 students to computer science and I hope to learn more and be able to teach/share some more about it! There are some great apps for exposing kids at our grade level to programming, one of which we tried today. Some of these are Move the Turtle (paid), Bee-bot (paid), Daisy the Dinosaur (free), and Kodable (free), which is the one we tried in class today. There is also a website with programming games for kids called, http://www.tynker.com/hour-of-code/. The students in our class really enjoyed trying Kodable, learning how to program the character to move through a maze on the ipad screen. Give these games a try at home and I hope to do more with them in class as well!